When Zach Taylor, a retired U.S. Border Patrol supervisory agent, talked about the situation on the U.S. border with Mexico, he didn’t pull any punches.

Disputing assertions by Barack Obama, the president, and Janet Napolitano, head of Homeland Security, that the border is “safer than it’s been in years,” Taylor was blunt in his disagreement:

“It’s more dangerous than I’ve seen in my 26 years in the Border Patrol.”

According to Taylor, ever since the Border Patrol was moved from the jurisdiction of the Justice Department after 9/11 to the Department of Homeland Security, it’s become a political tool of those who don’t see border issues as law enforcement matters.

Taylor was speaking to citizens at an event sponsored by the Cochise County Republican Committee in Arizona, and he leveled with them.

He says agents are denied the right to do their jobs because they are denied access to much federal land in their efforts to track illegal aliens and drug traffickers.

His main concern is the increased criminal element among illegals, making the situation not only dangerous for the BP but also for American citizens living and working in the state.

According to a report on his presentation in the Arizona Range News, in 1952 the Border Patrol was granted unlimited access to all private and state lands up to 100 miles inland from the border. This enabled law enforcement to deal with direct border issues and track illegals as they traveled inland through the thousands of acres of federal and private land.

But now, Taylor says, that’s changed and much of that land is off limits to the Border Patrol. But drug cartels aren’t stupid. They don’t have those restrictions, which gives them free access to U.S. land for transit and observation posts to track Border Patrol activity, situations confirmed to me by county sheriffs.

Taylor didn’t mince words in his indictment of the State Department in what he describes as interference with federal agencies in telling the American public the truth about border conditions.

He said Forest Service reports concerning the major fires that ravaged Cochise and other counties last summer, which stated that the fires were started by illegal aliens, were deliberately changed by the state to eliminate those statements.

He also said that firefighters were often shot at while on the fire lines. That, too, was excised from the final reports issued to the public.

As a native New Yorker who grew up on the East Coast, finished my education in the Midwest and ended up a Westerner – living in California and spending much time with friends and relatives in varied Western states – I don’t have patience with progressives and liberal clergy who stretch logic by defending illegal aliens.

“What would Jesus say?” My foot!

The only reason to bring religion into the illegal-alien argument is for the clergy to use guilt as a weapon. Fortunately, not everyone is gullible enough to fall for that, even if the veiled threat is that you’ll lose your soul.

We’re in the midst of a barrage of rhetoric about the “problem” of what is euphemistically called “illegal immigration.”

Sorry folks, immigration is a term applied to a country dealing legally with people who want to visit, work, emigrate and/or gain citizenship. All of those intents and procedures are in accord with the laws of the country.

When people just sneak into a country, disappear into the population and take advantage of the benefits of legal citizens of that country, what they’re doing is against the law.

It is patently illegal.

A sane country has immigration laws to protect its borders, population, economy, infrastructure and culture.

By that measure, the United States is an insane country.

We have immigration laws that are selectively enforced but, even then, only for certain people.

Currently, we have a president, a Justice Department, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement Department and a Homeland Security Department that are more than willing to cast a blind eye at the illegals swarming into this country.

They will not acknowledge the damage illegals cause to the lives and property of citizens. They won’t acknowledge the dollar cost to schools, medical facilities, social welfare programs and the judicial system. They don’t acknowledge that states pay the price when the feds don’t secure the border.

When states attempt to enforce federal immigration laws, the feds punish them with lawsuits.

I call it insane when a state is punished by the feds for enforcing federal law.

Their statements about the “safety of the border” are patently untrue.

Consider the border states – California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. Look at the border counties, the towns and cities and the Americans living and working there. The issue of illegal aliens is a daily problem that dramatically impacts their lives.

Law enforcement deals with “normal” crime, but too often it has become crimes committed by illegal aliens, often involving drugs and human smuggling, to say nothing of wanton destruction of the property of residents and threats to their lives.

Taylor ended his talks with photos of dismembered bodies and heads left behind by drug gangs, often on U.S. territory.

He told the group, “The border has become lawless,” and he sees more violence headed our way.